Range indexing allows you to get better performance for queries that involve filtering over a range.
It would be useful for a query like the following:
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM baseballStats
WHERE hits > 11
A range index is a variant of an inverted index, where instead of creating a mapping from values to columns, we create mapping of a range of values to columns. You can use the range index by setting the following config in the table config.
Range index is supported for both dictionary as well as raw encoded columns.
When to use Range Index?
A good thumb rule is to use a range index when you want to apply range predicates on metric columns that have a very large number of unique values.
Using an inverted index for such columns will create a very large index that is inefficient in terms of storage and performance.